


One Man Army

by tenshinokorin



Series: The World Can Wait [6]
Category: Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Gen, Retrofic, bishonenink classics, no compilation canon, no unsolicited concrit please
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-20
Updated: 2020-02-04
Packaged: 2020-05-15 09:16:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19292755
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tenshinokorin/pseuds/tenshinokorin
Summary: Zack meets the infamous silver general for the first time





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is a bishink.org classic fic--it was written prior to 2005 and therefore has no extended canon beyond that of the original game itself. Slight edits have been made to standardize names (before he was given a canon surname by S-E, Zack Fair was written in our fanon as Zax Darklighter) and to correct small grammatical errors. Otherwise it is the same as it was originally published on ffnet and our archive. (For other classic fic from me and my partner llamajoy, see the 'bishonenink classics' tag.)

The jeep squelched to a muddy stop in the middle of the encampment, the deluge of rain making no difference in the thick frosting of mud over the vehicle. Zack supposed it made for better camouflage than the army's paint job.

"Center tent." The aide reached into the back seat to pass him his rucksack. "Just go on in, no sense hanging out in the rain."

Zack opened the jeep door, and scowled up at the sky. "When's this supposed to clear up?"

The aide snorted. "Sometime in June, I guess." He shifted gears, and the engine grumbled protest. "Hop out, now. If I don't turn this thing around it'll be mired for a week."  
Zack obligingly clambered onto the track, noting with a bit of dismay that his boots sank up to the ankles in grey mud. He'd wanted to look good, or at least like officer material. The jeep ground backwards, spattering mud in a broad arc across his pants.

So much for that.

Zack shifted his rucksack on his shoulder and squidged his way across the camp, heading for the flagpole in front of a slightly larger tent. The flag hung limp in the rain, ShinRa emblem lost in soggy red folds. Zack's stomach did a funny little shiver, and for a wild second he considered making a break for it. But reason returned, and in the hopes of dry clothes in the near future, he pushed the flap back and stepped inside.

Zack had seen Sephiroth before, when he was first admitted to SOLDIER training. Only once, though, and at a distance, when the General came in to Midgar for some military business. He'd been in dress uniform, black and crisp and precise, every button shining like a star in the dark, his hair like a snowdrift, eyes cold.

The man in the middle of the tent was, if possible, even muddier than Zack was. His hair was a dull sort of silver in the watery canvas light, flipped back into a hasty ponytail. He wore the black pants, belt, and high boots of his rank, but the suspenders crossed bare over his chest. In the corner a black coat hung, dripping rainwater; through a small square of mosquito netting Zack could see a standard-issue cot, the General's shoulder plates tossed carelessly on it.

General Sephiroth himself was standing in the center of the tent, leaning over his desk, writing busily on a piece of paper.

Zack coughed. "Sir?"

"Just a second." Sephiroth didn't even look up, intent on his missive. He had finished writing, read the message twice, and was adding a postscript before he spoke to Zack again, still without lifting his head. "You're the new recruit, right? Fair, third class?"

Zack dug in his back pocket for his papers. "Yes, sir. Headquarters just sent me in--"

"You're replacing Ipsen." Sephiroth said, copying some numbers from his message to the top of a battered legal pad, swirling the pen twice when the ink quit on him. "He took a land mine. You have had guerrilla training, haven't you?"

"Yes, Sir." Zack held out his transfer notice, feeling awkward. He'd known Ipsen in basic, and the helicopter that brought him in has just been taking Ipsen out, unconscious and moaning, more bandages than skin. Under the blanket, the shape of his leg had been painfully wrong.

"Good. I need somebody not fool enough to step on mines. I've lost four now that way, and in plain sight. As if the fever wasn't getting enough..." He stopped writing suddenly, and looked up at Zack. Zack, who had been hoping all this time Sephiroth would do just that, suddenly wished he hadn't. His eyes were not quite human, gleaming with more than mako, slit down the middle like an animal's. "...You're young."

From anyone else Zack would have bristled at that; he'd done his training the same as everyone else, he'd just been good at it. For Sephiroth, though, there was just the truth. "Eighteen, sir." Zack felt, at most, all of twelve.

Those strange eyes narrowed, apprasingly. "You ever see a man die, Fair?"

The paper in Zack's outstretched hand trembled slightly. "No, sir."

"Hm." Sephiroth's eyes swept downward, to the transfer notice. "You can put that away."

Zack blinked. His transfer was supposed to be signed, for his records. "Sir, don't you need to--"

"That was a order, Soldier." His voice was not hard, if anything else, it was the gentlest he had yet spoken. Zack felt a small thrill of terror go from his spine to his toes, and he hastily stuffed the papers back in his pocket.

"I don't doubt you're who you say you are, Zack." Sephiroth's lips tightened in something too grim to be a smile. "Only a madman would come out here without orders." He brushed by him to the tent flap, pushing it open and pointing. "SOLDIER class have their own tents. There, to the left. Tomorrow we move into the jungle and make for the city. There will be a mission briefing tonight at twenty-hundred. Don't be late."

The tent flap went down and Zack, without being aware of it, was on the other side. The rain thumped on his rucksack as he stared at the General's tent for a long moment. He finally came to himself when a stream of water detoured from the top of the tent to land squarely on his head. Shaking it out of his ears, he began to make his way to his barracks. He could see Sephiroth's point. Wutai was bad enough in the rainy season, jungle full of booby traps, hills full of guerrillas, not to mention the snakes and bugs and monsters and various toxic plants. He was right, only a madman would come here without orders.

Zack found the tent with his name on it, rain-smudged paper pinned to the flap, and set his rucksack down in the middle of the damp canvas floor.  
Scuttlebutt at HQ was that Sephiroth had volunteered.


	2. Call of Duty

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Field Promotion, and a _two_ man army.

"Merry Christmas," Zack said, his laughter a low hitch in his chest. "Not how I guess you'd want to spend it." It was the end of the rainy season in Wutai, according to the last calendar Zack had looked at days ago, but apparently Wutai wasn't interested in letting up anytime soon. Water streamed from the broad leaves outside the mouth of the cave; a small muddy rivulet ran just beyond his boots. It was less of a cave and more of a hole, but Zack was disinclined to be picky. "Be better off back at camp? Or maybe in Midgar. It's probably covered in snow, right now. Don't you think, sir?" Zack paused, his fingers worrying at the knots tied in muddy bandages. "Sir?"

The general took a breath, opened one eye partway. Zack watched the slit pupil open and close, his commander looking at him without recognition. "Branford?" 

The knot gave in Zack's hands. "Fair, Sir. Lt. Branford is dead."

Sephiroth closed his eyes, air hissing between his teeth. "My apologies. I seem to be... slipping."

Zack looked down without comprehension at the mass of lacerations under his hands. "Me too, sir." 

"The helicopter crashed, didn't it." Sephiroth tried to sit up, and blood welled between Zack's fingers. "There was anti-aircraft fire... from the ground." 

"You should stay still," Zack said, adding belatedly, "sir." He told himself his fingers were shaking because of blood loss and two days without food, not fear and memory. The bandages were makeshift, torn out of the sleeves of his jacket; there had been no time to retrieve anything better. Wutai guerrilla fighters were not known for their leniency, but at least they hadn't known how many passengers the chopper had been carrying. Four bodies must have been enough to content them; Zack didn't think they had been followed.

"Leave it," Sephiroth said, as Zack ripped the stitches out of his other sleeve, trying to wring the fabric dry.

Zack tore the camouflage fabric into strips anyway, fumbling them tied with his fingers. "It's Christmas Eve, did you know?" Sephiroth made a vague noise, his head tilted back against the rock face. Water trickled down his arm, tinged pink as it left his fingers. Zack could not think about what he didn't know how to fix, broken bones grating under his hands, injuries that would have killed a normal man three times over. Instead he tied up his commander's ribs and shoulder again, willed the pale skin to knit. "I wonder if Ma sent me a card. She does, you know, every year. Once she found out where I was." 

The white general blinked at him bemusedly, a far cry from the man Zack had met less than a week ago. Sephiroth looked truly defeated, his long hair matted and no longer white, the fingers of his right hand refusing to even close, much less grip the hilt of the great black sword strapped to his back. Zack could not let himself even wonder at what kind of cosmic injustice would leave him alive and Sephiroth dying. "Did you run away from home, Fair?" 

Zack grinned. "Yeah, I guess I did." Zack tried to find a relatively dry patch to sit on, gave up, and squidged over to the wall. "I didn't know anything about entrance exams or the time limitations for SOLDIER, so I turned up two weeks too late for the fall slot, and had to spend the winter in a drain pipe under sector two." Zack waved a hand at the muddy cave. "Feels just like the good old days." 

Sephiroth began to make a noise, rasping and thick, and Zack was panicking for a full thirty seconds before he realized his commander wasn't having a seizure, he was laughing. "You don't strike me as the kind to hold back on an impulse." He went still, and opened both his eyes. They showed pain, but were unclouded for the first time since the helicopter crash. "How long have you been carrying me through the brush?"

Zack ran a hand through his hair, shrugging. "Two days? I knew we weren't supposed to stay at the wreck site, because of the damage of capture, so I've been trying to point us back towards camp..." 

"I know the protocol, Fair." 

Zack shut up abruptly. 

"Well?" Sephiroth said, without opening his eyes. "You're a SOLDIER third class, aren't you? Your commander is incapacitated, and you are deep in enemy territory. What are your options?"

Zack considered. "Even if we stayed here, there is no real chance of us being found. We hid our tracks from the Wutai guerrillas, and HQ would be justified in marking us missing in action. So it would be best to move on if we want to survive." 

"You didn't sleep though your classes, at least." Sephiroth ran a hand down his thigh, over the shredded black tatters of his pants. "It's taken you twice as long, carrying me. You know the book, don't you, Fair? Ones who can't keep up should be left behind."

Zack stared. "...I can't leave you, sir."

"Don't be an idiot. Of course you can. I am no use to either of us." Sephiroth struggled to grasp the hilt of Masamune, and failed. "Take my sword with you. I won't need it, and Central Command will want some proof." He smiled, bitterly. "I'm sure I will be a splendid martyr. That should please them." Sephiroth looked sharply at Zack, still hesitating. "Well? What are you waiting for? You can walk well enough. You want it an order? Fine." Slit irises narrowed. "Move out, Soldier." 

Zack paused only a moment longer, then nodded. He leaned forward and pulled Sephiroth's good arm over his, slinging the general ungracefully across his shoulders and standing, grunting with exertion. 

"What," Sephiroth said, in utterly bland tones, "in the name of hell are you doing?"

"Disobeying a direct order, Sir," Zack said, bearing his commander up, and beginning the long journey back to camp.

  


To Central Command, Admiral Heidegger, Midgar  
From Gen. Sephiroth, Field Encampment 435-B, Wutai Frontier

Enclosed are forms for promotion of SOLDIER #7607, Fair, Zack.  
Field promotion, SOLDIER, first class. Silver commendation.  
That is all.  
-S


End file.
